The present disclosure relates to the field of electronic communications, and specifically to the field of electronic chat sessions. Still more specifically, the present disclosure relates to the field of conveying emotions with text messages in an electronic chat session.
In multi-party chat sessions, such as those provided by the use of smart phones, tablet computers, etc., allow one or more parties to communicate with text messages. Such chat sessions often allow a set of text messages between two or more parties to be displayed on the user interface of such communication devices, thereby providing a chronological record of the text message exchanges between the parties.
However, text alone can be ambiguous. For example, consider the text message “I am so happy”. If spoken aloud, an emphasis on different words in the message can dramatically alter the meaning of the message. For example, if the word “I” is emphasized (i.e., is stressed when the phrase/sentence is spoken aloud), then the message implies that the speaker is the only person from a group who is happy. If the word “am” is emphasized when spoken aloud, then the message implies that the speaker is rebutting a challenge that he/she is not really happy. If the word “so” is emphasized when spoken aloud, then the phrase may be interpreted as being sarcastic. If the word “happy” is emphasized, then the phrase may be interpreted as the speaker truly being ecstatic.
In order to convey what the writer of the text message truly means by the text message, various approaches have been used in the prior art.
For example, U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2013/0002683 describes a method for augmenting text messages with emotion icons (i.e., “emoticons”), which are selected from a predefined set of emoticons. However, such a system is limited to such predefined emoticons, which may or may not express the true emotion of the sender of the text message. Furthermore, emoticons are often trivialized, due to their cartoon-like features. That is, a recipient of an emoticon may consider the emoticon to be a “throw-away” addition that may or may not truly represent how the text message sender is feeling. Also, a user may select an emoticon that, unbeknown to even the sender of the text message, does not really portray how they are feeling.
Another approach to clarifying how a text message sender feels is to alter the appearance of the text message through bolding, underlining, color changing, etc. That is, the sender of the text message may simply bold or underline the first word of the text message “I am so happy” in order to emphasis that he/she, if nobody else in a group, is truly happy. Known prior art removes the task of emphasizing certain text from the user, and causes text to automatically emphasized.
For example, WIPO Patent WO 2012/094725 describes a system that takes biometric readings of the text message sender, and then modifies the appearance of the text message to reflect the emotional state of the text message sender. For example, if the text message sender is highly agitated, then the font and/or size of text may be enlarged, jagged, bolded, etc. However, like emoticons, font changes may or may not clearly convey the emotion of the text message. For example, the font style “bold” may convey excitement, anger, fear, a feeling of being hurried, etc., which are different, if not incompatible, emotions.
Thus, the prior art, either singularly or in combination, fails to provide a system that clearly represents the emotion of a sender of a text message. Furthermore, the prior art fails to provide a system that conveys the emotion of a recipient of the text message. The present invention provides one or more solutions to this long-felt need.